Need info. on how public schools handle ED kids...

No, certainly the parents of the other students can’t interfere. There are many privacy regs for schools to consider now. For a substanially separate placement to be recommended for such a young child requires that all the other options be exhausted. Often for such kids an aide may be recommended. In every grade, in every class both my kids have been in, there are always 1-2 disruptive, loud, over-active and distracting kids. Kids really learn to tune them out and my son was even paired up with a kid with dificult behaviors for a lunch buddy program…he liked it and the behaviors did NOT “rub off.”

Of course this child has rights and deserves privacy. Believe me as the mother of an LD child, I am actually very sympathetic to this girl who is only 6 and obviously has some issues. But there is a difference between a hyper child and a dangerous child. This girl has thrown chairs at teachers, bitten, punched and kicked children in her class with no provocation. She recently stabbed another girl with a stick, thank goodness it wasn’t a pair of scissors!

this type of behavior would most likely result in a placement in a self-contained ed classroom in our district— -BUT, in my experience it takes almost a full school year for it to happen. i would certainly share your concerns in a respectful way with the principal. (Couldn’t hurt to put it in writing, either). Sometimes the principal will not realize the seriousness of the situation (s/he isn’t in the classroom all day every day with the student) and a call from a reasonable parent can really make him/her pay attention. our district also has a “threat assessment” procedure which would be used to determine if this child was a danger to herself or others.

Definitely get your concerns in writing. SOmetimes this is what enables the admins to get appropriate placement if a parent is reluctant; sometimes it’s what makes an admin see potential bigger legal issues down the road if they did not deal with a problem like this. (But… sometimes it doesn’t do squat… sometimes they get an aide to follow them around to protect them from themselves and others from them, still not addressing the causes of the behaviors, and the kiddo is never expected to behave, so the behaviors get weirder as they learn to get around those aides… you do *not* want to know what these kiddos are like in middle school; it’s sad for all concerned)

thanks for the good advice. We will follow up our phone call with a letter to the principal, and I guess to the superintendent if it gets to that. Hopefully they can intervene and help this child!